EPA probes serious waste blunder

THE Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is pursuing a pharmachem company responsible for a serious waste management blunder.

The EPA said yesterday it viewed the waste pipe labelling error at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) in Co Cork, which emerged this week but went unnoticed for eight months, as a serious breach of its operating licence.

A waste pipe mix-up at GSK’s Nanomilling facility in Currabinny resulted in waste - meant for incineration - being pumped instead to a waste water treatment pipe which in turn discharged into the harbour.